Coach’s Critical Career Tips: The Ability to Research

Hey gang, Coach here with a vital skill that you need in the IT arena. With the uber-fast rate of change in the IT world, the old big thick here’s-how-to-do-everything books are becoming so 20th century. You need to be able to do research online in order to get the latest and greatest info on how to get things done.

Nowadays, it may not be as important to know exactly what to do right off the top of your head, but rather know where to go to find the answers to the issues and problems you might be facing. Of course you know that a solid foundation of knowledge is critical to doing IT work, but there are always going to be limits to what we can cram into our heads.

Some Quick IT Research Sites

One fantastic resource I go back to over and over is the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. As IT folks, we forget that sometimes the information that we need is actually sitting right on Microsoft’s site. Granted, Microsoft’s web site is gargantuan in it’s scope, but taking a little time to become familiar with the primary areas of their site(s) can save massive time in the future.

For the web heads out there, you know that IIS 7 has been a huge upgrade in terms of modularity and capability of Microsoft’s web services. Get to know IIS.net. There is a massive amount of knowledge on that site.

And lastly, don’t forget about forums. A forum I visit a lot is the one hosted by my buddies over at petri.co.il. Chances are, whatever issue or question you’re facing, someone else has also dealt with the same thing. Finding a solution to an issue might be as easy as doing a search on Petri.

Always keep in mind that with as fast as everything changes in IT, it might be more important to know where to go to find the answer instead knowing what the answer is (at least initially-you do have to find the answer sometime). I’ve provided some resources here that I use time and time again, what knowledge bases, forums, and resources do you use to do research (besides the Best Computer Training on The Planet from Trainsignal.com) ? Post your links in the comments.

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